How much $$ can you expect coming off the wait list? It seems that money offered in the first round will become available. In a fair world, it would then be offered to the next best candidates. However, if those candidates have already put down a deposit, why bother? So then it would be offered to whoever hasn't hit their deposit deadline, which after the RD deadline would be WL. So is it possible to get more $$$ with middling numbers coming off of the wait list than somewhat higher number and accepted outright? In other words, could marginal numbers for a particular school become a financial boon?

xanderdellus wrote:How much $$ can you expect coming off the wait list? It seems that money offered in the first round will become available. In a fair world, it would then be offered to the next best candidates. However, if those candidates have already put down a deposit, why bother? So then it would be offered to whoever hasn't hit their deposit deadline, which after the RD deadline would be WL. So is it possible to get more $$$ with middling numbers coming off of the wait list than somewhat higher number and accepted outright? In other words, could marginal numbers for a particular school become a financial boon?

Schools understand that scholarship money they offer will be turned down, so they over offer.

So when I withdrew from Minnesota, 48000 dollars wasn't freed from their scholarship budget.

In fact some schools might see more people than they assumed accept scholarships, and might go over budget.

Plus, candidates who are easily admitted to a school rarely put down a deposit early because they're probably waiting on higher schools or trying to leverage other offers into scholarship money. I think the merit aid mostly goes to the top applicants who matriculate.

That said, lets say school X went for broke and tried to raise both medians substantially and didn't admit some lower numbers that would likely matriculate thinking the higher numbers would attend. Those high numbers then go somewhere else and school X has to scramble to try to admit the lower numbers that were WL'ed or rejected right off the bat. Suddenly, a 164/3.5 can look pretty attractive when your other alternative is to admit a 162/3.3.

I say this because I have a couple of friends that were offered some $$$ off the WL last year from a T20 school w/ below median LSATs (and GPA close to median, if not slightly over). And not chump change, either...